While a pet toy designed for a pet animal to play with the pet toy through biting on it has been traditionally known, there is a newly developed pet toy that allows an amount of food for an animal to be held in the pet toy, in order not to make the animal bored. For example, one such pet toy as described in the Patent Literature 1 as noted below comprises a main body member formed to have flexible side walls and an outer surface and a plurality of food capturing recesses arranged geometrically in at least a part of the outer surface. The pet toy with the food held in some of the plurality of food capturing recesses may draw the interest of the animal. Additionally, the Patent Literature 1 describes an embodiment that includes, in addition to the recesses in the outer surface that are not extending through the outer wall thickness, through holes (54 of FIGS. 11, 96 and 98 of FIG. 22, 94 of FIGS. 24, 25 and 26, 106 of FIG. 27, 110 of FIG. 29, 122 of FIG. 35, 124 of FIGS. 36, 94 and 126 of FIG. 37, 128 of FIG. 38, 130 of FIG. 39, etc.) that are formed to extend through the outer wall into an interior of the main body member which is configured to be hollow.
Pieces of food held in those through holes tend to fracture during the animal's playing with the toy, leaving some parts of the food in a cavity inside the toy, as shown in FIG. 24. It may take a long time for the animal to take out the parts of the food left inside, and consequently, during that long time period, the animal can be engaged by the pet toy. However, many of the through holes as described in the Patent Literature 1 are formed to be relatively smaller than those expected from a size of the main body member and geometrically complicated, making it quite difficult for a user to clean up inside the pet toy after use. On the other hand, forming the through holes to be relatively larger than those expected from the size of the main body member, such as 108 of FIG. 28, 114 of FIGS. 31 and 118 of FIG. 33, may facilitate the cleaning inside the toy or refilling the food, but also may allow the pieces of food to get out of the inside space and thus the animal to eat up the food in a short time, meaning that the animal could be hardly engaged by the toy for any longer period. In addition, the through hole 106, 110, which takes the form of slit simply made by boring through the outer wall, is difficult to open wider, because the main body member has a spherical configuration.
The cited Patent Literature 1 has not suggested any such configuration that allows the through hole to be open wider during cleaning and food refilling. Specifically, the invention as described in the Patent Literature 1 is primarily and exclusively designed to make the animal's attention being continuously captured by the toy without any consideration for filling the toy inside space with the food before use or cleaning the toy after use.
[Patent Document 1] Japanese patent application publication No. 2001-522612